1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatuses, and computer program products for load balancing servers.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
One area of computer software development is in the management and balancing of server workloads. In a computer network, a workload may be distributed across multiple computers, a computer cluster, network links, central processing units, disk drives, or other resources, to achieve optimal resource utilization, maximize throughput, minimize response time, and avoid overload. Another consideration for determining workload distribution is energy consumption. For example, in a data center with hundreds or even thousands of servers, the workload assignments may have a significant impact on which servers are cooled, how they are cooled, and the overall energy consumption of the air conditioning units cooling the servers. Therefore, balancing workload assignments among servers is an important area for controlling the costs associated with operating servers.